


Four Times Sonya Found Out What Her Christmas Present Was Ahead Of Time, And One Time She Didn't

by astralpenguin



Category: The Maze Runner (Movies), The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types, The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - No Maze (Maze Runner), Background Newt/Thomas, Christmas, Domestic Fluff, F/F, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Marriage Proposal, newt and sonya are twins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:20:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27898978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astralpenguin/pseuds/astralpenguin
Summary: Sonya always found out what Harriet’s Christmas present for her was going to be ahead of her receiving it.
Relationships: Harriet/Sonya | Elizabeth "Lizzy" (Maze Runner)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 10
Collections: Maze Runner Secret Santa 2020





	Four Times Sonya Found Out What Her Christmas Present Was Ahead Of Time, And One Time She Didn't

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tommyglued](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tommyglued/gifts).



> merry christmas angie!!

Sonya always found out what Harriet’s Christmas present for her was going to be ahead of her receiving it.

The way that she found out was different every time. She never actively attempted to find out what her present was ahead of time, it was always an accident, but there wasn’t much that she could do to prevent it from happening. And it wasn’t like Harriet was doing it on purpose. Every year she tried to keep what Sonya’s present was a secret until the time came to give the gift.

_ Tried  _ being the operative word.

  
  


**1.**

In their first year of knowing each other, in their first year of college, before they admitted they  _ liked _ each other but when they were already closing in on becoming each other’s best friend, Harriet straight up told Sonya what she was getting her.

They’d been sitting in the tiny kitchen in Sonya’s dorm building.

The next day was the last day before Sonya and her twin brother, Newt, would be flying back to England for the holiday period. Their group of friends had decided to throw a Christmas party (of sorts) on the last day. It would be held in Newt and Minho’s shared room and everyone would bring along something for the whole group to eat and/or drink.

Sonya and Harriet had volunteered to make a Christmas cake.

While waiting for the fruit, sugar, butter, and brandy mixture to cool down enough for them to add the rest of the ingredients, their conversation turned to some of their friends’ latest antics.

“It was a bet,” said Sonya.

“Who would take a bet like that?”

“We’re talking about Minho and Thomas here.”

“Oh right,” said Harriet. “That makes sense actually.”

“Yeah,” said Sonya. “Newt couldn’t remember how the conversation started, but Thomas ended up saying that it didn’t matter what he was wearing, he could run five miles no problem. Of course Minho called him on it, because there are  _ definitely  _ outfits that make running super hard, and saying that it doesn’t matter at all is, at best, an exaggeration. Of course Thomas then said that the only reason why Minho called him on it was because he couldn’t do it himself, and despite Minho  _ knowing  _ better, he decided to defend himself. And that’s how the two of them ended up running around the lake in hotdog suits for however many loops it took for them to cover five miles.” She grinned. “Newt recorded the whole thing and put it on YouTube, just in case anyone missed it.”

Harried grinned. “Nice,” she said. “Was it worth it? What did they bet?”

“I think the loser had to buy lunch for the winner,” she said. “So it depends on whether you think one meal is worth being all everyone on campus is talking about for the week. I wouldn’t do it, but I think Minho’s enjoying himself.”

“And Thomas?”

Sonya shrugged. “He won, so at least he got some food out of the deal.” She held her hand over the fruit mixture to check the temperature. It was still too hot. “I’m thinking of getting them both hotdog stickers for Christmas.”

“Aren’t you going home in two days? You don’t really have any time to get Christmas presents now.”

“Yeah, I know,” said Sonya. “I’ve been putting it off for way too long and now I’m out of time. I’m just glad that online shopping’s a thing.”

Harriet shook her head. “I wouldn’t be so quick to rely on that,” she said. “I ordered something for you ages ago, and I only got the email saying it had dispatched  _ today. _ It’s not going to get here in time.”

“I thought you were just getting chocolates for everyone, seeing as our group’s so big.”

“Yeah I am, but-”

Harriet cut herself off, seemingly having just realised what she’d admitted to.

Sonya grinned. “Oops?”

Harriet gave her a half hearted glare.

Sonya slid off the counter that she’d been sitting on and walked over to Harriet. She took both Harriet’s hands in her own and squeezed them tight. “Thank you for getting me something for Christmas, that’s really sweet of you. I don’t mind that it’s not going to get here in time for you to give it to me. That just means I’ll have something extra to look forward to when I come back.”

“I really wanted you to have it before Christmas,” said Harriet. “I swear I’m never ordering from that company again, this is the third time they’ve done this.”

“You could show me what it is?” Sonya suggested. “You don’t have to, I’m happy to wait until you can give it to me properly, but if you’d rather not wait to see my reaction then you can show me now.”

Harriet considered it for a moment, then nodded. She got out her phone, navigated to the correct page, and handed her phone over to Sonya.

On the screen was a picture of a neon light, not entirely unlike ones that are used to signify that a diner is open or closed. Except instead of spelling out any sort of text, the light was shaped and coloured like a rainbow.

Sonya beamed.

“I love it!” she said. She handed Harriet her phone back. “It’s such a shame it didn’t arrive in time, I really want that.”

“I did good?”

Sonya laughed and grabbed Harriet’s hands again. “Yes,” she said. “You did very good.” She let go of Harriet. “Now I just need to figure out what extra thing to get you.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Tough,” said Sonya. “I’m doing it. If you didn’t want me to get you something for Christmas then you should’ve thought about that before deciding to get me an awesome light.”

“I just saw it and thought of you, it was an accident really.”

“Harri, there is literally nothing you can say that’s gonna stop me from getting you something, so stop trying.”

Harriet sighed, but there was a smile on her face. “Alright.”

(Not too long after that they had a mishap while mixing the fruit mixture in with the rest of the cake’s ingredients. Harriet ended up having to wash cake batter out of Sonya’s hair.)

(The cake turned out fine.)

  
  


**2.**

They roomed together in their second year.

They’d started dating in April in their first year, so when the option to live together had been presented to them, it made perfect sense for them to do it.

They were best friends before they started dating, so they’d most likely have applied to room with each other anyway, and now that they were dating it just made even more sense to stick together.

It was now nearly a whole semester in and they were having a great time!

But it did make the issue of gift giving more difficult.

The dorm rooms were small. Very small. With two people living in there, there wasn’t much room to keep anything hidden away where the other person wouldn’t see it. Sonya knew everything that Harriet owned, and Harriet knew everything that Sonya owned.

Which meant when Harriet got a parcel one day, a week out from the end of semester and Sonya flying home, Sonya knew about it immediately.

“What have you got there?”

Harriet put the unopened box under her bed. “It’s your Christmas present,” she said.

“Ah,” said Sonya. “I guess I’m not allowed to be here when you open it then?”

“No, you’re not.”

Sonya pretended to be disappointed, then laughed, and the matter was quickly forgotten.

The next few days were spent preparing for their friends’ Christmas get-together at the end of the week and finishing up any assignments that were still due.

This year Sonya and Harriet had said that they’d be bringing store bought cookies. Making the cake the year before had been a lot of fun, but it had also been a Lot in general, so they’d made absolutely sure that someone else could do it this year.

Minho and Gally would cope just fine.

As for the assignments, Sonya ended up having to hole herself up in the library in order to get an essay written. She tried writing it in her room at least three separate times, and every single time she’d been distracted by her girlfriend after writing little more than a single sentence.

She wasn’t mad about it. She liked being distracted by her girlfriend. But only writing one sentence every time she sat down to write the essay wasn’t going to get the essay written in time for its deadline, so she’d had no choice but to remove herself from the situation.

Without Harriet nearby to tear her attention away, writing the essay turned out to be a lot easier than Sonya had anticipated it being, and she was finished a whole hour earlier than she’d told Harriet to expect her to be done by.

So she packed up her things and went back to her room.

Which, as it turned out, was an error.

She opened the door to find wrapping paper all over the floor, and Harriet in the middle of cutting a square of paper big enough to wrap the object sitting on top of the square.

The object was a box for a set of pink headphones with cat ears on the top, which were the exact pair of headphones that Sonya had been considering buying for herself.

Harriet’s expression was like a deer caught in the headlights.

Sonya suppressed a laugh. “I can come back later?”

“How could you do this to me?”

Sonya was no longer able to suppress her laugh. “Sorry!”

“You should be sorry. I was so careful!” She looked down at the headphones. “Wait, no, these aren’t for you.”

Sonya raised an eyebrow. “Mmhmm?”

“Yeah!” said Harriet. “They’re for..... my cousin...... Ximena.”

“Your cousin Ximena.”

“Yes.”

“Your cousin who can’t exist because both of your parents are only children, and who also just so happens to have the same name as the pretty girl in your art class?”

Harriet blinked. “Well when you put it like that it sounds fake.”

Sonya laughed again. She stepped further into the room, around the wrapping paper, and closed the door behind her. “Why not say it was for one of our friends?”

“Because then the question would be why I’d spent so much on one of our friends over everyone else, and also I panicked.”

“Panicking is fair,” said Sonya. She put her bag down on her bed. “It’s okay, I don’t mind knowing ahead of time.”

“I know,” said Harriet. “I just wanted it to be a surprise.”

Sonya shrugged. “There’s always next year.”

Harriet resumed cutting the square of wrapping paper. “There is,” she said. “I’ll do better next year. And you’re still not getting this until I give it to you properly.”

“Of course.”

(Sonya used the headphones for almost the entire journey back to England. She adored them, and didn’t at all mind that the surprise had been ruined.)

  
  


**3.**

They lived off campus in their third year.

They were still living together, of course. They’d found an apartment that was forty minutes away from campus by bus. It was small, one bedroom, one bathroom, and a kitchen so tiny that if the two of them stood in there at the same time then there legitimately wasn’t any room for anyone else to join them.

It was perfect.

Usually the distance from campus wasn’t an issue. Sonya liked long journeys, and she liked Harriet’s laughter whenever she mentioned that forty minutes  _ was  _ a long journey even more. The commute was a daily ritual, sometimes spent talking and sometimes not, but almost always together.

Sonya didn’t have class today.

She  _ did _ have an essay due at midnight.

When she’d been living on campus, important deadlines such as these had been her cue to go to the library. It would be crowded but it would be ultimately less distracting than whatever her first year roommate, or whatever Harriet, was getting up to.

But Sonya had less than a day left to get the essay written, written well, and submitted, and she’d barely even started it.

The bus journey, the struggle to find a seat, the getting everything set up, it would all take up time that she simply couldn’t afford to lose.

She couldn’t go to the library.

She explained all of this to Harriet in a rush when they woke up in the morning. Harriet had complained about the new day beginning, had burrowed deeper into their pillows, and had asked for ten more minutes.

Sonya couldn’t spare ten more minutes.

And Harriet understood.

She got out of bed and got dressed. She pressed the power button on Sonya’s computer, bringing it to life, and setting it down on the desk.

“I’ll bring you breakfast,” she said. “You need to get to work.”

Sonya had just finished getting dressed herself and had just sat down in front of the computer when Harriet came in with food for them both. They ate in companionable silence while Sonya opened up the programs and sources she’d be needing between mouthfuls. She wanted to start talking, to chat about something, and usually Harriet would’ve started a conversation by now. But they both knew that if they  _ did  _ start to talk, then they wouldn’t stop for hours.

Sonya had an essay to write. Much as she would’ve adored spending hours talking to her wonderful girlfriend, she didn’t have the time.

Part of what made Harriet so wonderful was that she understood that as well.

Once they’d both finished eating, Harriet kissed Sonya’s forehead and took both their plates away. She closed the bedroom door behind her, leaving Sonya alone.

One hour and an introductory paragraph later, the bedroom door reopened, but Sonya didn’t look around. She assumed that Harriet was stopping in to grab something that she’d forgotten and tried to keep focused on her essay.

Then she felt a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“Hm?”

She looked up to see Harriet place a mug on the desk next to her computer.

“Two sugars, right?”

Harriet had made her tea.

Sonya reached up, put her hand on the back of Harriet’s head, and pulled her in.

The kiss was slow and relaxed. There was no urgency to it. They’d kissed a million times before and would kiss so many more times in the years to come. It was comfortable. It was familiar. Sonya loved every moment of it.

“Yes,” she said once they parted. “Thank you.”

Harriet smiled, and stepped away. “I’ll bring you another one in an hour.”

Sonya nodded, and Harriet left the room.

Sonya picked up the mug of tea.

Before coming to America, Sonya hadn’t liked tea very much. She’d been aware of the stereotype of British people being obsessed with tea, and she’d seen with her own eyes that this stereotype wasn’t even wrong, but tea itself hadn’t done much for her. It wasn’t until she’d come to America and seen the obsession that some - not all, but undeniably some - of her friends had with coffee that she’d started to drink tea more.

The warmth of the tea seeped through the mug and into her hands.

She took a sip.

Harriet had made it perfectly.

She put the mug down and resumed writing.

Half an hour later she caught herself staring at the purple stripe of Harriet’s pride flag instead of working, briefly considered taking it down so that it wouldn’t be a distraction, then reminded herself that if a purple stripe was enough to distract her then she’d be able to find something else in the room that could do an even  _ better _ job at distracting her with ease. 

And that stopping to take the flag down was a form of procrastination in its own right.

_ And  _ that stopping to consider all of this was itself distracting her from her essay.

By the time Harriet brought her her next mug of tea, Sonya had only made a further two sentences of progress since Harriet had brought the first one.

Sonya didn’t kiss her this time.

Instead she pulled Harriet into a bone crushing hug.

“I’m gonna fail.”

“No,” said Harriet. “You’re not. You haven’t got anything less than an A in the whole time I’ve known you.”

“I just spent an hour on two sentences, I’m gonna fail.”

“You’re not!” 

Harriet’s voice was stern and sure and, just for a moment, Sonya believed her.

Harriet didn’t disappear immediately this time. She hung around for a few minutes, letting Sonya take a break from working that didn’t make her feel like time was slipping away from her.

When she left she took the old, empty mug with her.

And Sonya turned back to the computer.

A few hours and mugs of tea later Harriet brought Sonya lunch. Like during breakfast, they sat together quietly and ate.

They were nearly finished when Sonya broke the silence.

“What are you up to today?”

“Christmas shopping,” said Harriet. “If I can get everything ordered and sorted now then I won’t need to worry about it later.”

Sonya smiled. “Smart,” she said. “I should get on that too.”

Harriet nodded. “You should,” she said. “You can do it later, after your essay’s been submitted.”

Sonya rolled her eyes. “Obviously!”

Harriet’s smile was gentle and teasing. “Just checking.”

She kissed Sonya and took the plates out of the room.

An hour later she showed up again with more tea.

She kept it up while Sonya wrote, and read, and thought, and wrote some more.

And finally,  _ finally,  _ in the early evening, Sonya’s essay was complete.

She saved the document approximately seven times before getting out of the chair and jumping in place until some of her excess energy had been expelled.

She read it through to fix typos.

She read it through again to make sure it made sense.

She went and sat on the other side of the room for a few minutes, quietly playing a song chosen at random from her daily mix, before going back to the computer and reading it through a third time.

Satisfied that it was good enough to submit, she did just that.

She didn’t want to leave it until the last possible minute until submitting her work. That would’ve been asking for things to go wrong, and she’d had a close enough shave during her first year that she had zero inclination to take that particular risk. Leaving it until the last  _ day  _ had been bad enough.

But it was over now.

She was free.

And she deserved a reward for getting through it.

She’d wanted to do what Harriet was doing, and get some Christmas shopping done, right? There wasn’t any harm in her getting something for herself while she was at it.

She already knew what she wanted to get for most of her friends. It didn’t take long for her to track down the items and add them to her cart. She wouldn’t get anything for Newt, her parents, or Harriet for now because she wanted to spend more time thinking about what to get for them, but everyone else was sorted. She navigated to her own wishlist, picked something from it at random, and added it to her cart.

Or at least, she tried to.

Apparently somebody else had purchased that item already.

Sonya was confused at first, but then she realised.

The only people with access to this wishlist were Harriet and herself.  _ She  _ hadn’t bought this item already, hence why she’d tried to buy it now, which could only mean that Harriet had bought it.

Harriet, who’d spent the day doing all her Christmas shopping online in between bringing food and tea to Sonya as she worked.

Oops.

Sonya had been anticipating that book for over half a year. She was just as excited to get it from Harriet as she would’ve been had it remained a surprise, and she truly didn’t mind knowing what her gifts were going to be ahead of time.

But for the third year running Harriet had tried to keep her gift for her secret, and for the third year running that had failed. 

Sonya had to own up. She wasn’t a good enough actor to pretend that she hadn’t seen it.

“Babe,” she said as she emerged from the bedroom.

Harriet muted the TV and turned around on the sofa to look at her. “Yes?” she said. “Have you finished your essay?”

Sonya nodded.

Harriet beamed. “Well done!” she said. “You did great!”

Sonya sat on the sofa beside her. “I have a confession.”

“Oh,” said Harriet. She put her arms around Sonya, pulling her into a hug. “What is it?”

“Have you ever heard of the saying  _ ‘Never two without a third’ _ ?”

  
  
(Harriet sulked for a few minutes, but eventually saw the funny side of it. Sonya ordered them pizza as an apology.)

  
  


**4.**

They stayed in that apartment for their fourth and final year of college, and for some reason unknown even to them they volunteered to host that year’s Christmas party friendship get together.

Which meant that, on the day before the party, they had to clean the whole apartment.

It was their one job. The next morning Gally and Minho would be over to put up the group’s dedicated decorations for the event, and everyone else would be bringing food. All Sonya and Harriet needed to do was make sure that there was enough space for everyone to sit, that there was enough space for all the food to go, and that there were enough things like hand soap and toilet paper available for all the people who were going to be there.

Harriet took a shopping list to the store while Sonya set about cleaning up the lounge.

Ideally nobody besides them would be going into the bedroom, so that room didn’t need to be cleaned as thoroughly as the other rooms in the apartment, but if they were cleaning and tidying the rest of the place then there wasn’t much point in leaving that one room out. 

But the bedroom wasn’t a priority. The lounge  _ was. _ So that was where Sonya started.

The obvious things went first. Any trash went into a trash bag, any books went back on the shelf, the TV remote got put neatly on the coffee table instead of buried under half a mountain of cushions.

On second thought, the cushions could go into their bedroom until after the ‘party’. They were taking up space on the couch that, with the number of people who were going to be coming round, they couldn’t afford to let the cushions take up.

Sonya put the cushions on the bed for now. Them being in the bedroom was a temporary measure so they didn’t need to go in a specific place.

The next thing was a pile of folded laundry that had been left on the coffee table.

This pile of laundry had been there so long that Sonya wasn’t sure whether it was her or Harriet who had washed, dried, and folded them. All she knew was that the pile was a mixture of both their clothes, and that it needed to be put away before tomorrow.

She took the pile into the bedroom and opened the closet and drawers that, at a glance, it looked like the clothes in the pile belonged, and she started to make her way down the pile.

She was making good progress!

And then she went to put some of Harriet’s socks away, and stopped.

There was something in Harriet’s sock and underwear drawer that was decidedly neither sock nor underwear.

It was a purple box.

She took the box out of the drawer and opened it.

Which turned out to be a mistake.

Inside the box was a necklace. The chain was a delicate silver, and the pendant was a snowflake glittering with tiny pale pink and blue gems.

It was beautiful.

It was also probably her Christmas present.

Sonya looked around the room.

The rainbow light from their first year and the pink cat-eared headphones from their second year were sitting on their desk. She used both of them almost every day and she still loved them just as much as she had when she’d first learnt about them. The book from the previous year was sitting on a small bookshelf next to her side of the bed. She’d read it in March, and it had easily become a new favourite.

She already knew that she loved this necklace.

She closed the box and put it back in the drawer.

And she had an idea.

She went over to the desk and grabbed a post-it note.

_ Sock drawer? Really? LOL! I Love you <3 _

She stuck the note to the box, put the rest of the laundry away, and left the bedroom to continue tidying the lounge.

Sonya knew that if she didn’t tell Harriet and tried to pretend that she hadn’t found the necklace, she would fail miserably. Leaving the note for Harriet to find meant that she  _ had  _ told her about it, which meant that she’d be able to put it out of her mind and act like a normal person.

Harriet would find the note sooner or later.

She hoped that Harriet would find it amusing.

(Harriet found it very amusing, and also considered the possibility that she’d been cursed.)

  
  


**+1**

They decided to stay in that apartment the next year as well.

It was perfect, so why move?

Harriet had stayed on at college, having got a place on an international relations masters program. Sonya had joined a confectionery firm as a French/English translator.

Sonya thought that Harriet was going to change the world one day, and Harriet always said that a candy company was perfect for someone as sweet as Sonya.

It was the first year that their college group weren’t able to throw their regular annual Christmas not-exactly-a-party. They’d tried their best to organise it, but with both Minho and Brenda literally living on the other side of the country it hadn’t been feasible.

They had a group video call on the day that they would’ve had the party if they’d been able to, and it was a lot of fun, but it wasn’t the same.

Brenda and Minho were given strict instructions to sort themselves out for the next year so that they could all see each other in person, and they promised that they would.

As the virtual party wound down and Sonya and Harriet left the call, Sonya realised something.

“Hey,” she said. “Haven’t you usually accidentally spoiled my Christmas present by now?”

Harriet smiled as she shut off her computer. “Yes.”

“But you haven’t this year?”

“No,” she said. “I haven’t.”

Sonya grinned. “Congratulations!”

“Oh no, don’t worry, there’s still time.”

They both laughed.

But the days went by and Sonya didn’t find out what it was.

She wasn’t searching for it. She never did. Every time she’d found out what her present would be ahead of time had been unintentional on both of their parts, and she wasn’t about to start being a dick about it. 

If Harriet had finally figured out how to hide a present, then good for her.

For the first time, Sonya didn’t fly home for Christmas, and neither did Newt.

They were both adults and they were both in serious, long term relationships. The conversations they’d had with their parents about wanting to spend Christmas day with their partners had been difficult, but important. They all ended up agreeing that Sonya and Newt would visit them in the summer, and that they would call each other on Christmas day.

Sonya wasn’t alone in spending Christmas morning on the phone with her parents. Harriet did just the same. Neither of them bothered getting out of bed, and they both spoke quietly enough that they wouldn’t get picked up by each other’s phone.

When their phone calls were over they lay beside each other for a while, talking softly about the day ahead but neither one of them willing to move just yet.

Inside the bed it was warm and they were lying in each other’s arms. What more could they possibly want?

Food turned out to be the answer to that question. Sonya’s traitorous stomach betrayed her and gurgled loudly enough to destroy the careful quiet in their room, and the girls decided that it was time to make breakfast.

They made breakfast together most days, so this wasn’t anything special or unusual.

It felt special to Sonya anyway.

They squeezed into their tiny kitchen and worked together to make the eggs, bacon, and pancakes.

Sonya thought back to the first time they’d tried making something together, that Christmas cake four years ago, and how cake batter had ended up in her hair. There were no such mishaps this time around. They’d grown more used to each other’s presence since then. They were more easily able to anticipate each other’s movements.

Plus they’d both simply got better at cooking. That bit didn’t hurt.

The first pancake was a disaster, but the first pancake is always a disaster no matter how good of a chef you are. They cut it in half and shared it as they waited for everything else to cook.

When their food was done they curled up on the couch with their plates on their knees, with the TV turned on and its volume turned down low. A movie was playing that Sonya had seen a million times before, and she didn’t feel any strong need to focus on it.

“When do you want to do presents?” she asked.

Harriet shrugged. “I don’t mind,” she said. “When were you thinking?”

“We could either do it now, or we can do it after we get back from Newt and Thomas’ place,” said Sonya. “I guess we could also do it  _ at  _ Newt and Thomas’, but I don’t think that we’ll get the chance, honestly.”

Harriet nodded, and put her empty plate down on the coffee table. “Now?”

Sonya put her plate, that just had a single rasher of bacon left on it, down and retrieved the two wrapped packages from under their tree.

“Can I open mine first?” asked Harriet.

“Sure.”

Sonya shoved her last bit of bacon into her mouth as Harriet worked the paper off of her gift.

Sonya had got her a notebook. The cover of the notebook showed a deep blue lake with pink and white clouds above it, and a girl in a white dress standing alone atop the water. The inside pages were blank, save for occasional illustrations of flowers or the moon. Harriet flipped through it, a small smile on her face.

Eventually, she looked up.

“Thank you,” she said. “I love it.” Harriet put her new notebook to one side. “Now you open yours.”

Sonya’s present was small, smaller than anything that Harriet had given her for Christmas or birthdays in the past. And, for the first time, Sonya had no idea what was underneath the wrapping paper.

She unwrapped the paper to find that she was holding a small, velvet box.

She opened the box to reveal a ring.

She looked up.

While Sonya had been doing that, Harriet had slid off the couch and was now down on one knee between it and the coffee table.

It was Christmas morning, and they were both in their pyjamas, and they’d just finished their breakfast, and Harriet was proposing to her.

Sonya burst into tears.

(She’d never expected that she’d cry when this day came, but life was full of surprises.)

(Later, at Newt and Thomas’, she showed off her ring with joy. Everyone there was delighted for them both. Newt demanded to know when this had happened and if Sonya had been keeping it a secret from him, Teresa pulled them both into a hug and told them that she’d been waiting for this day to come, and Thomas started crying with happiness.

Sonya and Harriet couldn’t have wished for better friends.)


End file.
